Spend Them Kindly

Who Needs Gravity?

Seriously, I know by the sheer number of weight loss product search results (188,000,000) that I am not the only one who wishes that Sir Issac Newton had just stuck to eating the dang apples that fell from the tree and not try to figure out HOW or WHY they fell from a tree. Although it does help, I guess, to know that there is less gravity on the moon. Maybe I’ll weigh myself there, from now on!

For the first half of my life, I never worried about working out or eating right or fitting into my jeans. In fact, I was probably too thin (in school I was called Chicken Legs), but that was just what my body did, naturally. Not because of my serious efforts of cigarettes and Big Gulps. I weighed a whopping 103 pounds when I got pregnant with my son, and maybe 110 when I got pregnant with my daughter four years later. It wasn’t until I hit about 35 that I started noticing that I wasn’t as naturally thin as I used to be.

Now, in order to not be 300 pounds, I have to actually move my body intentionally at a brisk rate of motion and watch everything I put in my mouth. What is this hell?

Back in the days when I owned a CrossFit gym and would counsel clients on nutrition, I would tell them that food is a sneaky little bastard. If you ate a doughnut and it showed up on your ass 15 minutes later, in the shape of a doughnut, you would likely never eat a doughnut again! But food is not like that. It is insidious in the way it tricks you into thinking that “this ONE cookie won’t make a difference” or “what is this ONE bite going to do that the banana split you ate yesterday didn’t already do?” And, really, it’s right. If it was only just that ONE cookie or ONE bite you were dealing with. But it’s all of the OTHERS that have gone before that are the problem.

So knowing this, why does my mind act like a spoiled three year old every time I decide that enough is enough and I’m going to get serious about this eating better & exercising thing? Tell me I can’t eat chocolate and I’ll crave chocolate, although I might be the only woman on earth who really doesn’t love the stuff. Let me know if I have to turn in my woman card.

It certainly doesn’t help to own a scale either. Good GAWD. I talk to that thing like I talk to my youngest about her school work. “WHAT DO YOU MEAN you are not going to get moving? Do you NOT care about how crazy you are making ME with this nonsense? WHY do I have to say the SAME THING EVERY.SINGLE.DAY? I am TIRED of REPEATING MYSELF! WE have been DOING THIS for MONTHS NOW!” Yes. That is probably how I sound to my kid. I am an awesome mom.

I wish I could just give up and not care if I weighed a million pounds and had a closet full of muumuus, (and I dream about not caring, kind of like I dream of boarding school), but the fact is, I am a vein woman who likes fashion, and so the battle wages on.

Someday I’ll tell you about my my tapeworm plan, but in the meantime, it’s good thing that I actually LIKE healthy food. And running, well, okay, at least I like the running shoes…